Breakfast with dessert helps weight loss

Dieters might be able to have their cake and eat it too -- researchers in Israel found a sweet dessert at breakfast contributed to weight loss. Professor Daniela Jakubowicz, Dr. Julio Wainstein and Dr. Mona Boaz, of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Diabetes Unit at Wolfson Medical Center, and Oren Froy of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said a full breakfast that includes a sweet dessert contributed to weight loss success. The study involved 193 clinically obese, non-diabetic adults randomly assigned to one of two diet groups with identical caloric intake -- the men consumed 1,600 calories per day and the women 1,400. However, the first group was given a low carbohydrate diet including a small 300 calorie breakfast, and the second was given a 600-calorie breakfast high in protein and carbohydrates, which included a dessert of chocolate. Halfway through the study, participants in both groups had lost an average of 33 pounds per person, but in the second half of the study, the low-carbohydrate group regained an average of 22 pounds per person, but participants in the group with a larger breakfast lost another 15 pounds each. The study, published in the journal Steroids, found at the end of the 32 weeks, those who had consumed a 600-calorie breakfast had lost an average of 40 pounds more per person than their peers. Though they consumed the same daily amount of calories, the participants in the low-carbohydrate diet group had less satisfaction and felt that they were not full, the study said. "But the group that consumed a bigger breakfast, including dessert, experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day," Jakubowicz said in a statement.